Africa’s Wildlife, Crowdsourced

Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park covers a vast 5,700 square miles, and after researchers from the University of Minnesota set up cameras to help document 400 square miles of that territory, they needed help identifying a veritable Noah’s Ark of animals. Through SnapshotSerengeti.org, “citizen scientists” have helped classify more than a million images of animals including zebras, buffalo, and cheetahs. The photographs span four seasons—each six months long—and scientists are analyzing the images season by season. A recent study of the fourth season provides some insight into what animals popped up most frequently: while 70% of the images didn’t have any animals in them, the ones that did were most commonly of wildebeest, zebra, and gazelle, all of which migrate during that time. The images in this gallery have been selected from multiple seasons of photographs, and reveal a candid and entertaining look at the Serengeti: elephants, hyenas, lions, and more—all of the creatures captured on camera when the heat and motion of their bodies triggered the shutter.